When Sergei ducked into the tent, he was relieved to see no uniformed strangers standing next to Captain Kuznetsov, who sat at a rickety table doing paperwork by the light of a kerosene lamp. Kuznetsov looked up and set down his pen. "Ah. Yaroslavsky." His tone could have meant anything-or nothing.
Sergei saluted. "Reporting as ordered, sir." If he was going down, he'd go down with style. Not that that would do him any goddamn good, either.
"Da," Kuznetsov said, again with nothing special in his voice. Then he went on, "Make sure you and your airplane are ready to fly out of here first thing tomorrow morning."
"Yes, sir!" Sergei couldn't keep the relief from his voice. An order that was a real order! "Uh, sir…Where are we flying to?"
"To Drisa, northwest of Polotsk," Captain Kuznetsov answered. "It's right near the Polish and Lithuanian borders-and it's about as close to East Prussia as we can get while we stay in the Rodina."
"I see." Yaroslavsky wondered if he did. "Will we be flying against Germany again, then, sir?"
"We have no orders for that at the present time," his superior said. He didn't go on to say whether he thought it was likely or unlikely. Sergei didn't presume to press him, either. If you gave an opinion that turned out to be wrong, somebody would make you pay for it. If you kept your mouth shut, no one could pin anything on you.
Along with the rest of the SB-2s in the squadron (except for one grounded by bad hydraulics), Sergei's flew out at first light the next morning. Ivan Kuchkov was badly hung over. Yaroslavsky wouldn't have wanted to fly like that, not with the two big engines throbbing and growling away. Nothing the bombardier could do about it, though, not unless he wanted to try his luck with the stockade-or, more likely, the NKVD. If Kuchkov complained, the engines' thrum kept anybody else from hearing him.
Russia scrolled along below the bomber: farmland and forest and swamp, with here and there a town looking all but lost in the vastness of the landscape. Puddles in the Pripet Marshes reflected the gray sky. Mouradian minded the map and made sure the bomber didn't stray too far west and end up in Polish airspace. Sergei wasn't afraid of what the Poles would do to him. They flew nothing close to the deadly German Messerschmitts. But what his own superiors would do to him for screwing up didn't bear thinking about.
"Drisa's in Byelorussia, yes?" Mouradian asked.
"Yes," Sergei agreed.
The Armenian sighed. "They'll talk like the Devil's uncle, then."
Russians didn't have any trouble following Byelorussian. Russians could follow Ukrainian, which differed more from their language. And of course Byelorussians and Ukrainians had to understand Russian. But Anastas Mouradian had learned it in school. He spoke well, and understood standard Russian well. Its cousins, though, weren't open books to him, the way they were to Sergei.
North of the Pripet Marshes, patches of snow started showing up on the ground. It would be colder here. Sergei suspected he would spend a lot of time in his flight suit. Leather and fleece that could keep out the cold at 8,000 meters could do the same against even the Russian winter.
He landed the SB-2 on a dirt strip outside of Drisa-an unprepossessing place if ever there was one. His teeth clicked together when the plane touched down. The runway was anything but smooth. He didn't bite his tongue, though. And the SB-2 was built to take it. As he brought the bomber to a stop, he wondered how much it would have to take, and how soon.
Another gray, damp, chilly day in Munster. Sarah Goldman sat in the rickety bleachers at a soccer pitch and watched her brother break away from the back who was trying to guard him. Both teams were made up of nothing but Jews. Saul was so much better than anyone else on the field, it wasn't even funny.
The goalkeeper ran out to try to cut down his angle. Saul got his toe under the ball, lofted it just over the fellow's luckless, reaching hands, and watched it bounce once and roll into the net.
"Goal!" Sarah shouted exultantly. Her mother and father clapped their hands. That made it 5-2 with only about ten minutes left in the second half. Saul's team had the game in the bag.
But he only shrugged, as if embarrassed at what he'd done. He probably was. This was his second goal of the match, and he'd assisted on two others. The soccer couldn't be much fun when you outclassed friends and foes alike. Saul might have made a professional in another year or two. It didn't seem he'd ever get the chance now.
Sarah supposed she ought to count herself lucky the Jews got any chance to play at all. Yes, these bleachers might fall down in a stiff breeze. Yes, she was sitting on a blanket because she'd end up with splinters in her tukhus if she didn't. Yes, the pitch was bumpy and looked as if it were mown by goats. This had to be the most miserable place to play for kilometers around.
Which was, of course, the only reason the Jews got to use it. Sarah pictured a plump, blond, uniformed athletic commissioner laughing till his jowls wobbled as he gave the two Jewish teams permission to play here. Maybe he thought a match here would be worse than no match at all. Were the teams involved full of Aryans, he might have been right.
Ever since 1933, though, Jews had had to take whatever scraps of comfort and pleasure they could find. Even a soccer match on a horrible excuse for a pitch was better than none. It gave people an excuse to get out of the house, an excuse to get together and see one another and gab.
Yes, a couple of policemen were also watching the game and the little crowd in the stands. What could you do about that? Nothing, as Sarah knew too well. If you were a Jew in the Reich, somebody was going to keep an eye on you.
She leaned over to her father and asked, "What do they think we're going to do? Roll up the chalk lines and carry them home in our handbags and pockets?"
Samuel Goldman shrugged. "Maybe they do. Maybe they think we can turn the lines into bombs or something, and use them to blow up NSDAP headquarters."
"Would you blow up Nazi headquarters if you could?" Sarah asked.
"Of course not!" Father's reply was too loud and too quick. "The National Socialists have done wonderful things for the Reich. They've made Germany wake up." Deutschland erwache! was a favorite Nazi slogan.
As Father spoke, his eyes told Sarah she'd been foolish. After a moment's thought, she knew just how, too. Father couldn't hope to give her a straight answer, not where anyone else could hear him talking. Yes, the only people in earshot were other Jews. But did that mean they wouldn't betray one of their own? Fat chance, Sarah thought bitterly. If ratting on fellow Jews would give them a moment's advantage, plenty of people would do it in a heartbeat.
Sarah hoped she would never stoop to anything as vile as that. She hoped so, yes, but she admitted to herself that she wasn't sure. Times kept getting harder and harder. If not for Father's gentile friends who gave him articles to write, she didn't know what the family would have done.
Mercifully, the match ended. The teams lined up and shook hands with each other. Players tousled one another's sweaty hair. The goalkeeper on the other side mimed chipping the ball the way Saul had, then threw up his hands in mock-or maybe not mock-despair.
The sparse crowd came down onto the pitch. Practically everybody there was related to one player or another. "You were great, Saul!" Sarah made herself sound enthusiastic, even if she knew her brother wouldn't be.
And he wasn't. "Big deal," he said. "These guys try, but I feel like a grown-up playing against kindergarten kids." He sighed. "Any soccer is better than none-I guess." He didn't sound sure; not even close.
"If the Foresters would let you come back-" Sarah began.
Saul cut her off with a sharp, chopping motion of his right hand. "The Foresters would. They'd take me back like that." He snapped his fingers. "But if the SS says no…What are you going to do?" His wave took in the sorry excuse for a pitch, the fumbling opponents, and the paltry crowd. "You're going to play in matches like this-for as long as they let you, anyhow."